BROTHERS JACOBS JUMPING THROUGH NBA HOOPS

The Brothers Jacobs did their due diligence in the past and decided their passion didn’t pencil out.

The former San Diego Clippers season ticket holders looked into bringing an NBA team here over the past decade, but a good portion of a billion bucks to build an arena and buy a team was an economic risk they judged to not be worth it.

Amen to that. San Diego likes basketball just enough to embrace San Diego State after a number of winning seasons. Viejas Arena’s 12,414 seats were entirely sold out for the first time this past Aztecs season, and the $3,500 it cost to get a seat on the floor for the season at Viejas is just $1,000 more than the same seat costs for one Lakers game at Staples Center.

That doesn’t mean the Brothers Jacobs don’t still think about the possibility of an NBA franchise in San Diego at some point in their lifetimes.

But they’ve moved on for now. North, in fact.

News broke this week that Paul Jacobs has joined the investment group trying to buy the Sacramento Kings to keep the team from moving to Seattle.

First things first: Should the group succeed in its purchase and prevention of a move north, the involvement of the Jacobs does not portend a move south.

“Absolutely,” Jeff Jacobs, the baby brother, said this week. “There is no plan, no desire to move the Sacramento Kings to San Diego. This is about keeping them in Sacramento.”

Believe that, not only because the Jacobs are smart people but because they are sentimental.

The brothers had season tickets to the Clippers when that franchise packed up and left for Los Angeles 28 years ago.

“We remember very well when the team moved out of town,” Jeff said. “We still remember it somewhat sadly. We didn’t want that to happen to Sacramento.”

The boys — Jeff (47 years old), Paul (50), Hal (53) and Gary (55) — are the sons of Irwin Jacobs, co-founder of Qualcomm, the company that Paul now runs.

They’re super loaded, and they love basketball.

Jeff, Paul and Hal played hoops in high school. Jeff’s La Jolla High team won a CIF title when he was a junior. While students at Cal, Jeff and Paul used to play pickup ball with Kevin Johnson, who would go on to play 14 years in the NBA and 4½ years ago get elected mayor of Sacramento.

“We’ve always thought about owning an NBA team or at least being involved in an ownership group,” Jeff said.

And so they — Jeff and Hal are also part of the Kings group; Gary is pretty busy with the minor league hockey and baseball teams he owns — joined billionaire investor Ron Burkle, 24 Hour Fitness founder Mark Mastrov and TIBCO Software CEO Vivek Ranadive to try to head off another group trying to buy the Kings and move them to Seattle.

The group has been assembled by Johnson, the Sacramento mayor and former NBAer who used to school Paul and Jeff in those rec games in Berkeley.